Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A couple of weeks ago I let my rant-flag fly and put up this post reacting to a Wall Street Journal piece on Adele. Now Alex Ross has a post up expressing his uneasiness about some recent writings including that one. Best of all, he includes a link to a post by Isaac Shankler in NewMusicBox that has an extended take-down of the whole thing. Isaac points out:

the aspect of the article that I find most offensive, the implication that music is like a science of emotional manipulation through sound, and that it’s as simple as applying a “formula” to achieve commercial and artistic success. Not only is it belittling to musicians and listeners everywhere, it also implies a very narrow view of musical craft. I want to strenuously argue for the value of music that doesn’t necessarily cause tears or chills. The burden on music to communicate certain, specific emotions can be oppressive.

Ah, a formula to achieve commercial success! Just the thing the industry needs. Didn't music use to have some rep as a, um, help me out here, wait ... oh yes, an "art form". One fine day, we will go back to listening to music as music.

Hat tip to Greg Sandow for linking to this article in the Guardian. Let me just give you the head and sub-head:

What the music industry needs to do with the classical renaissance

Boundaries are being broken across the music world. The industry can capitalise on it if it embraces the spirit of change

Well, I suppose it is a good thing that there is a "classical renaissance", whatever that means, though everyone has been saying quite the opposite for a long time now. But what bothers me are the words "music industry". Sure, I guess from most points of view, journalists' at least, music is an 'industry' like the telecommunications industry or the film industry or textiles. You know, the people in the music industry manufacture product for the consumption of the general public just like shirts and pants. Different colors and designs for different tastes. Different price points, too. A single track from iTunes is what? $0.99? Versus a season ticket to the Met? You have to dig through quite a few pages to find out, but it looks as if you could see a whole season for between $1800 and $2500.

But this seems an odd perspective on which to view the art of music. Surely we listen to music, at least some of us some of the time, because it speaks to our souls. Sorry to use that phrase, which some might find odd, but I mean that music, at its best, expresses something we can find nowhere else--a kind of ecstasy perhaps, or a vision of beauty or a spine-chilling power. Something we do not get from the other industries. I doubt very much that Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon thought of themselves as being components of an industry.

The article goes on to say:

We're currently seeing a melding of genres and a breaking of boundaries across the music world. This recent trend – listeners moving to the avant garde after they start demanding more from the mainstream– has long been acknowledged within pop. In recent years, mainstream pop artists have even started adopting aspects of the avant garde in their search for fresh output: it's a dialogue that has benefited artists, labels and listeners alike.

Up until now the implications for former "niche" genres – classical, jazz, world – have been largely overlooked. In a world where listeners no longer define themselves along firm genre lines, music is increasingly just that – music. As a result, we are now witnessing a musician-led movement gleefully adopted by listeners, in which classical is being rebranded from the ground up. Even the term "classical" itself seems obsolete in the face of what's being produced and consumed.

Actually, I think that everything they are saying here is not news. The Beatles, for example, most definitely were influenced by the classical avant-garde, especially in the White Album. Melding genres and crossing boundaries has been the modus operandi of musicians--well, forever. I doubt you could find a decade in the whole history of music in which that wasn't going on.

But what strikes me as most odd is the reference to classical music as a "niche genre". I suppose in commercial terms, that is, if you define a niche genre as one that sells relatively few recordings compared to the mainstream ones, that is what classical music is. But this is to be completely oblivious to the history of music. Classical music, as a high art practiced for more than a thousand years, is hardly the niche. It is pop music, which has ruled the roost commercially for the last fifty years or so, that is the niche. There has always been popular music and high art music and the two have always influenced one another.

Don't you really think, given the nature of the thing, that music, especially classical music however defined, is really more than just an industry?

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

That last post, about iconic cultural figures, got me thinking. Just what is it that a composer is trying to do? A classical composer, that is. We have a lot of husks of exhausted ideologies of the past littering the landscape of classical music. As I hinted at in the last post, there are pieces celebrating victories and mourning defeats in the 15th century; pieces showing the transcendent truth of Catholicism in the 16th; pieces that advance the principles of radical humanism in the 17th; pieces that express the truth of Protestantism in the early 18th; pieces that depict the revolutionary energy of the late 18th; and on and on. In the early 20th century there were musical ideologies that proposed wiping out the past and creating a new, more rational future. That hasn't turned out quite as they imagined! Many books could be (and have been) written just on musical ideologies, though they are often presented as the New Truth and not as just another ideology.

Given the precarious situation classical music and composers are in in the 21st century, just what role should composers be taking on today? Can they, or should they, try and express the central truths, or issues of our time? Or should they try and transcend all that? Both options have been chosen at different times in music history. Should classical music try to become popular, or should it absorb things from popular music, or should it ignore popular music? All these options have also been chosen in the past.

It's a conundrum... One thing that composers have usually done is try and please their patron, whoever is paying the commission whether it is a pope, a circle of Florentine nobles, the Canada Council (a separate body, funded by the federal government, who commissions most new music in Canada), the National Endowment for the Arts or the New York Philharmonic. In the past, doing so would usually result in music that might be of some real cultural significance. When various popes supported Palestrina, that guaranteed that his music was considered of real significance. Similarly with the activities of the Florentine Camerata. When it comes to the folks that pay for new music today, it would be an extremely interesting exercise to determine just what it is they want and why. The choices of the popes and the Florentines made sense at the time. How do the choices of the Canada Council or the NEA make sense now? What if they are calling the tune according to an obsolete ideology?

I'm putting all this in the form of questions because I really don't know the answers. What I suspect is that there are some serious fractures in our culture and, while there is music that certainly expresses this, it doesn't tend to tell us much about the nature of those fractures, and if it does, it probably does nothing to heal them.

Over at Greg Sandow's blog there is usually a lively discussion going on about classical music and how it is doing in the culture today. Here is his latest post. I made a few comments and the last one was lengthy enough and possibly interesting enough for me to want to put it up here. In the original post Greg is worried that classical music cuts itself off from the mainstream culture and ends with this:

I’ve run into a lot of what I’d call classical music exceptionalism, the belief — so often passionately held — that classical music is special, that U2 may be fine, in its place, but that classical music is something people have to like, that it’s superior to the dross (musical and otherwise) of current culture. Etc., etc., etc.

We can believe that, if we like, but the people we’re trying to reach don’t believe it. To reach them, we’ll have to let them see that we value — not just understand, but value — who they are, and what their culture is.

In response to one comment he said:

speaking now from my experience as both a pop and classical music critic — it’s generally a lot easier, and quicker, to take the measure of a new classical piece, even a long one (40 minutes or more), than it is to absorb a new pop album. The classical piece shows its spots fairly quickly.

Which I responded to:

Without citing any particular piece of new classical music, it is hard to know how to take this argument. If you are talking about some minimal music, well, maybe. But it seems as if this is a straw man. An anonymous piece of new music, perhaps by a minimalist, versus a classic by Bruce Springsteen. Oooookkkaaayyy.

Let me offer the contrary argument: it is generally a lot easier, and quicker, to take the measure of a new pop piece by, say, Katy Perry, than it is to absorb a new classical piece by, say, Thomas Adès or Osvaldo Golijov. Katy Perry usually shows her, uh, ‘spots’ rather quickly. Isn’t what I just said a truism?

Greg also made the point that classical music has no "iconic cultural figures" equivalent to, say, Bob Dylan, which I attempted to disagree with, citing Shostakovich among others. While agreeing with me on Shostakovich, Greg responded with this:

But, Bryan, I don’t know that you understand what I mean by an iconic cultural figure, of which there are innumerable examples in the pop music of the last 50s years, and many before that. I can’t blame anyone who loves classical music for — no doubt without meaning to — inflating its depth and importance more than any reasonable logic (and available facts) would warrant. But if you understand the meaning of Dylan, and so many others in pop, it’s hard to say that just because someone is a great classical musician, they’re playing in the same league. Musically, they might be. But culturally, they most likely aren’t.

After some thought, I wrote this comment:

Greg, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to this sooner–very busy these days! But the discussion is fascinating because, as always when people disagree, there is a lot to be learned. What I’m picking up here is a couple of things. First, I usually try to avoid getting too far into sociology and politics. I like to stick to ‘the music’. But, of course, you can’t really do that completely because music, all music, is in the world and has sociological and political aspects–often crucial ones. To go back a bit, yes, you are quite right, I did not understand what you meant by “iconic cultural figure” or, rather, I was ignoring that aspect because it is not purely musical. I do see what you mean. Well, I could pick around the edges a bit. I was around in the 60s, listening and playing music (in the second half of the 60s, at least) and for me the Beatles and Cream were the big cultural icons. Dylan, not so much. My point is just that there might not be universal agreement as to who the big cultural icons actually are. Society is no monolith.But that aside, another way to describe what you call iconic culural figures is to say that around certain figures in music history a mythology has grown up that idealizes and otherwise alters the reality a bit in order to fit a cultural need. Possibly the first figure in music of whom this is true is Josquin des Prez, whom the 16th century idealized. Another was Beethoven, whom the 19th century idealized. Now we have Bob Dylan, whom, out of our own cultural needs, we idealize. As you say, “a great musician isn’t necessarily an iconic cultural figure.” And vice versa, I suppose. Absolutely! Sometimes a great musician may become an icon, or develop mythical aspects, because he or she fulfills a cultural need of the time, sometimes not.Now here is where I come to something that you might find interesting and even useful: in the past, what we now call ‘classical’ music often performed some crucial roles in the culture. For example, Palestrina’s music was a kind of ars perfecta that was a model for the transcendent truth of the Catholic faith against the objections of the Reformation. It was in some ways at the heart of the great tensions in the society of the time. Beethoven’s music, with its revolutionary energy, was entirely in the ferment of the great changes that were happening in European society at the end of the 18th century. And so on…From all indicators, the music that is at the heart of the, well, if not great issues, then certainly the prevailing sensibilities, of the 21st century is pop music. No disrespect intended; by pop music I mean all that music that is not classical or jazz or world music: Katy Perry, U2, Radiohead, Lady Gaga, the whole bunch. This music is the music of our time in a way that Thomas Ades or even Philip Glass cannot be.The reason for this is that there was a revolution in music in the 20th century that you could trace just by record sales. At one point Van Cliburn could outsell Elvis. But very soon the sales of, eg, Beatles albums dwarfed classical music sales. This is important because where the money flows tells us something about where the social interest is. In the past, music was driven, not by commercial sales, but often by the needs of the most powerful figures in the society.In the 15th century certain composers were intimately involved with events central to the culture. In 1453 Constantinople fell, the last bastion of the ancient world and heir to the Roman Empire. In response to this Philip the Good of Burgundy vowed to go on a Crusade. A great banquet, the Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant, was held and music was a central part of this event, probably including a lament written by Guillaume Dufay. Also associated with Philip the Good and his successor were a number of masses built around the song L’Homme arme written by a host of composers including Antoine Busnoys, an important member of the court. This ceremonial music was hugely important in the culture.

My point is that, if there were a true equivalent today, someone like Philip Glass or John Adams would be writing ceremonial music that would express the central issues and events our our time and culture. Adams’ opera The Death of Klinghoffer and Steve Reich’s 9/11 certainly make an attempt to do so, but while they are artistic statements, they are ones that are contested rather than accepted. I suspect that the reason for this is that contemporary art, including music, has long adopted the posture of being at odds with the mainstream culture. It is hard to imagine a composer now being associated as closely with the powerful figures in society as many were in the past. Perhaps the closest might be the role of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in the European Union. One thing we do apparently agree on is that Shostakovich was indeed a cultural icon in the Soviet Union. The interesting questions are why and how. The issues are enormously complex, which is why I usually just try and focus on the music!

Monday, February 27, 2012

Now, finally, we come to the Diabelli Variations--please see the previous post for the background. I felt this piece needed the stage to be set. We saw that the variation form as a series of primarily melodic variations, originally improvised, over a repeating bass line or chord progression, has a very long history. We also saw that Bach achieved a marvelous synthesis of this technique with the other long-established one of canon in his Goldberg Variations.

I mention all this because the context is important. Bach
and Beethoven are like two high mountains standing high above the valleys
below. When Beethoven set out to write his variations on a waltz given to him
by the publisher Diabelli, he was very conscious of the example of Bach. In a
sense, the Diabelli variations are a response to the Goldberg Variations.

Beethoven, as you may imagine, did not want to duplicate
Bach’s feat, but to see if he could surpass it. There is an interesting echo in
Beethoven’s set. In the Goldbergs, Bach includes a quodlibet, a variation in
which two different popular tunes are combined over the harmonic progression.
Beethoven manages to parody a tune from Mozart’s Don Giovanni as one of his
variations.

Here are a few points to be aware of regarding the piece:

Beethoven
was completely deaf when he composed these

Anton
Diabelli, the publisher and composer, wrote a waltz in early 1819 that he
invited some 50 composers to write variations on

Beethoven
had a certain amount of disdain for the waltz, which he called a Schusterfleck
“cobbler’s patch” meaning that it was crudely constructed

He
wrote about 2/3rds of the music in 1819, then set it aside until 1823,
when he added a number of variations to complete the work

Even
for Beethoven this piece is very unusual—the theme is undistinguished and
so a lot of the variations are parodies, mocking various aspects of the
theme. I’m reminded of an English teacher I had at university who asked us
to read a short story by Franz Kafka called “In the Penal Colony”. This is
a very dark story about a prison where there is a diabolical machine that
carves the name of your crime onto your body. Our professor strode into
the class, tossed the book on the lectern, grinned and said “this is a
very funny story.” Then he went through it in detail and showed us how, by
exaggeration, incongruity and other literary devices, the story is
actually very funny—black humor, of course. Similarly, Beethoven’s
variations show the theme in various comic guises through exaggeration,
incongruity and other devices.

It is
also unusual because with Beethoven usually the opening of the piece
signals the weight of what is to follow—but not in this case where the brevity
and somewhat crude simplicity of the theme is no guide to what is to come—this
is part of the joke.

The
Diabelli Variations are late Beethoven which poses some challenges to the
listener as late
Beethoven usually involves long forms with larger organization and each
piece tends to use a unique form

Also
typical of late Beethoven is intense transformation—this theme is
dissected, compressed, expanded, X-rayed and dissolved. By variation XX,
if we hadn’t heard everything in between, we would hardly recognize the
theme. It has evolved like a living organism

Another
quality of late Beethoven is that the whole work has an overall
progression that we might call psychological or even spiritual—witness the
transformation over 50 minutes of the mundane waltz into the transcendent
final minuet

Beethoven, unique among composers, creates a musical
work that has a personality, comes alive, and in this work we can hear that
personality emerging from the simple and ordinary waltz theme.

Let’s look at the waltz. There are three important elements:

A) the turn beginning to the melody (the bass line also has the same turn,
inverted)

B) the descending 4ths and 5ths from the opening
of the melody and

C) the modulating sequences in the second half.

The triple
fugue that is the penultimate variation has three subjects, each of which uses
one of these three elements. Here is Alfred Brendel playing the waltz and the first few variations with the score. The theme itself takes the first 54 seconds:

Another interesting aspect is mode: it is a cliché of Classical variations that after a few variations in the major,
there is one in the parallel minor. Except for Var. 9 the first 28 variations are all in C major, then variations 29, 30, and 31 are all in C minor with the last
having a section in Eb. Variation 32 is a triple fugue in Eb, which is the
relative major of C minor, meaning that it is closely related by having the
same key signature of three flats. The final variation, a minuet, returns to C
major. Ironically, this transcendent minuet evokes the kind of grace and
delicacy that Mozart is renowned for…

Just as in Kafka’s short story, there is something absurd
about the greatest set of variations in the Classical Era being written on such
a trivial waltz. It is a very Beethoven thing to do as he loved the challenge
of making a great deal from very little. One thinks of the theme from the Fifth Symphony. I doubt
any other composer in the whole thousand years of Western music could have
matched this accomplishment, though Brahms, among others, certainly tried. Here is a 'roadmap' to the whole of the piece:

Tempo

Meaning

Key

Material

Theme

Vivace

Lively

C maj.

A B C

Var I

Alla Marcia maestoso

March, majestic

C

B C

Var II

Poco allegro

Somewhat fast

C

C

Var III

L’istesso tempo

same tempo

C

A C

Var IV

Un poco vivace

A bit lively

C

A

Var V

Allegro vivace

Fast and lively

C

B

Var VI

Allegro ma non troppo e serioso

Fast, but not too much and
serious

C

A

Var VII

Allegro

Fast

C

B C

Var VIII

Poco vivace

A bit lively

C

C

Var IX

Allegro pesante e risoluto

Fast, heavy & resolute

C min.

A

Var X

Presto

Very fast

C

C

Var XI

Allegretto

Moderately fast

C

A

Var XII

Un poco più moto

A bit faster

C

A inv.

Var XIII

Vivace

Lively

C

Bare ver.

Var XIV

Grave e maestoso

Slow and majestic

C

A C

Var XV

Presto scherzando

Very fast and playful

C

B

Var XVI

Allegro

Fast

C

B

Var XVII

[Allegro]

[Fast]

C

B

Var XVIII

Poco moderato

Somewhat moderate

C

A

Var XIX

Presto

Very fast

C

C?

Var XX

Andante

Walking speed

C

Bare C?

Var XXI

Allegro con brio—meno allegro

Fast with energy—less fast
(alternating)

C

A

Var XXII

Allegro molto alla ‘Notte e girono faticar’ di
Mozart

Very fast after Mozart’s
‘Night and day I’ve been working…’

C

B

Var XXIII

Allegro assai

Very fast

C

A

Var XXIV

Fughetta: Andante

Little fugue: walking pace

C

B

Var XXV

Allegro

Fast

C

A B

Var XXVI

[No tempo given—same as
prev.]

C

Bare

Var XXVII

Vivace

Lively

C

Bare

Var
XXVIII

Allegro

Fast

C

C

Var XXIX

Adagio ma non troppo

Slow, but not too much

C min.

A

Var XXX

Andante, sempre cantabile

Walking, always singing

C min.

C

Var XXXI

Largo, molto expressivo

Very slow, very expressive

C min. (& Eb)

A B ornate

Var XXXII

Fuga: Allegro

Fugue: fast

Eb maj.

B C A

Var
XXXIII

Tempo di Minuetto moderato

Minuet speed

C maj

A B C

In the roadmap I have created the last column gives the
thematic material used in each variation. The three basic elements, the turn
figure, the descending 4ths and 5ths, and the rising chromatic progression I
have labeled A, B and C. All three are in the theme, of course, but the only
other place we find all three together are in the next-to-last fugue and in the
final minuet. Every other variation focuses on one or two of these three
elements. Often only one. For example, variations iv, vi, ix, xi, xii, xviii,
xxi, xxiii and xxix use just the turn figure which is sometimes reduced to just
a trill. That is pretty amazing in itself, that he could derive nine variations
from those four little notes. The descending 4th and 5th
figure is focused on in variations v, xv, xvi, xvii, xxii, and xxiv. Some
variations I have marked “bare” meaning that the theme is reduced to its bare
bones—in xiii, for example, most of the theme is taken away, leaving only
rests! In xxviii, it is reduced to nothing but the diminished 7th
chord and tonic harmonies. In contrast, in var. xxxi an enormous amount of
intricate ornamentation is added. But the most unique aspect of how Beethoven
explores the theme is not by adding notes, as just about every other composer
would have done, but by subtracting elements, dissolving the theme into its
tiniest parts and then building something new from these fragments. For a
composer, listening to this is like a lesson in how to write music. For any
listener, the piece is a spiritual journey that reveals the hidden beauties
that lie beneath the surface of even the most ordinary and unassuming things in
the world—like a ‘cobbler’s patch’ waltz by the very ordinary composer Anton
Diabelli.

To sum up: in this piece Beethoven re-invents the whole idea of variation: instead of each variation using the same chord progression or a minor version of it as so many other Classical period variation sets do, he takes the theme apart, discovers its constituent elements, fractures it, re-constructs it and finally transcends it. Each variation is an interesting piece of music in itself, but the set as a whole, with all the interrelationships among the variations and to the original theme, is something unprecedented in music. Now here is the rest of the set, also in the performance by Brendel:

Quotes

"I always find plenty to disagree with on Bryan's blog but I always find it a stimulating place for discussion and I seem to learn something new every time I visit this site."

--commentator Anonymous

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--commentator Archilochus

I am so thankful for obsessive thinkers and writers like yourself who give us something interesting and intellectually nourishing to chew on almost every day. And your discussions have clarified and expanded many of my views about art and music in particular.

Bravissimo!

--commentator Jives

Congratulations for running a comments section full of enlightening aesthetic debates.

--commentator Jack

Thanks for your devotion and hard work on this blog. It should be required reading for anyone with love of, or interest in, classical music.

--commentator David

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About Me

Born in Alberta, Canada, grew up on Vancouver Island, lived a decade in Montreal, resident in Mexico since 1998. Degrees in music from McGill University in performance, post-graduate study in musicology. From 2008 to 2011 I wrote a large set of songs for voice and guitar on poems by Robert Graves, Wallace Stevens, Victor Hugo, Rilke, Aristophanes, Anna Akhmatova, Roethke, Li Po, John Donne and Philip Larkin.
Catalogue includes two suites for solo guitar, chamber music for violin, viola and guitar, two guitars and harpsichord and other combinations including three pieces for guitar orchestra published by Guitarissimo of Stockholm, Sweden. In the last couple of years I have focused on music for orchestra and so far I have written an overture and three symphonies.
Publications include two books of pedagogy for guitar, one on technique and the other on playing Bach, which included eight new transcriptions for guitar.
Four Pieces for Violin and Guitar are available from The Avondale Press: http://www.theavondalepress.com/catalog/four-pieces/
In April 2015 a new piece for violin and piano, "Chase" was premiered in a concert at Belles Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Gto. Mexico.